Forgive me if this post makes little or no sense. I'm writing on limited sleep, but writing helps me process information and is oddly therapeutic, so I'm putting this in words. Plus - I'm sure I'll need to look back on this post in a few weeks/months to remember this whole episode.
As I wrote in my last post, Caleb went to the pediatrician last Thursday. He was put on amoxicillin and xopenex (nebulizer) for a respiratory infection that was causing coughing, matted eyes and runny nose. The pediatrician also wrote a prescription for orapred and a stronger dosage of xopenex and said to have those filled if he didn't show improvement. Rudy stayed home with him Thursday and Friday. Saturday night, he had a fever of almost 103 degrees. On Sunday, we took it easy and stayed home all day and night. Monday, I had to go to work, but Rudy was off for the King holiday. He dropped off the extra prescriptions and I went to get them after work. Caleb took his first dose of orapred on Monday night with his dinner. We knew he was still too sick to go to school on Tuesday, so Rudy planned to stay home with him again. On Tuesday, the Caleb we all know and love was replaced by a monster. Rudy said that he spent the whole day crying about the smallest things and being aggressive for no reason at all. When I got home Tuesday, he was still being a pain. Rudy needed a break and I can't blame him one bit. He went to run an errand and I decided that maybe Caleb was just feeling cooped up and needed to get out of the house for the first time since Wednesday afternoon. I took him to the mall to get some dinner and read books at the bookstore. When we walked into the food court, he threw his first full-fledged tantrum. In addition to screaming bloody murder, he pulled my hair and pinched my cheek and flopped his whole upper body limp while kicking me. Looking back on it, this was pretty impressive body control. I certainly didn't see any positives to it at the time, though. I was just glad the mall wasn't crowded and there wasn't anybody there that I knew. I calmly (pat on the back) took him into the bathroom area and sat him down on the couch and very sternly told him "no scream, no kick, no hurt Mama." He got big tears in his eyes and gave me a hug. It was almost like he realized that he had just had an out-of-body experience. It was at that point that I realized that I was dealing with more than just a tantrum and that this had to be related to his medicine or to being sick or both. We got dinner from Subway and he hardly ate anything. He did, however, enjoy the echo of the empty food court and drinking water from a straw. At that point, whatever made him happy was fine with me. After dinner, we went to Borders, where my precious child proceeded to go up to a display of Cookie Monster books and say, "uh-oh" before pulling about 10 of them to the floor. He did manage to help me clean up his mess before heading off to the stairs, which he decided to climb. That was perfectly fine, except he didn't want to come back down once he got to the top and - again - threw a lovely fit in the store. I managed to get through the check-out with the help of a very kind store associate who played with Caleb while I paid. I got into the car and drove straight home, still wearing the mark on my face from where he had pinched me earlier.
When we got home, Rudy and I struggled with the decision of sending him to school on Wednesday or not. His nose and eyes had dried up and his cough was much better, but we were now looking at the major personality change that we figured out was from the orapred. We decided that since he hadn't had fever in 36 hours, we'd take a chance with the knowledge that I might have to drop everything and go get him. I dropped him off on Wednesday morning, checked in the nebulizer with instructions for dosing and talked to one of the directors about the decision we had made and asked her to please call me immediately if I needed to come get him. My phone rang at 3:00 and I left work 15 minutes early to go get him. His teacher said that he was just so obviously miserable and had coughed and cried all day. I don't know why they waited so long to call me, but I got to him as soon as I could. He coughed all the way home with the strangest cough I've ever heard. It was heartbreaking. When we got home, he cried for over an hour and I couldn't figure out why. I offered him milk and a graham cracker, but he threw them back at me. When Rudy made it home, Caleb just wanted to be held. His wonderful Daddy dropped everything and held him while I cancelled my students for today and made some mashed potatoes - one of Caleb's favorite foods. When we put him in his chair to eat, though - he wouldn't even take a bite. He just cried until we picked him back up and held him.
In the meantime...I called the doctor's office Wednesday afternoon to ask if we could please take him off the orapred if it wasn't absolutely necessary. Dr. Harmon's nurse, Noel, was wonderful and managed to get us off the orapred and got us a prescription for pulmicort - another nebulizer medication. When she called me back to tell me that she got the prescription, Caleb was standing right next to me, crying so loudly that I could hardly hear. Noel asked me if that was him and I told her, "Yes, and I have no idea why he's crying." She said, "Haley, he doesn't either." That made so much sense to me and put the whole thing in a much better perspective. Nurses are amazing that way.
Caleb took both of his nebulizer treatments like a champ, which is tough, because that means sitting still for a long time! We gave him his amoxicillin and put on his PJ's at 7:00, because he was just so lethargic. As soon as I picked him up from the changing table, he put his head on my shoulder and went to sleep. I sat down in the recliner and held my sleeping child for 2 hours last night. If it was the only comfort I could offer him, I was willing to sit for as long as he needed. I thought he would rest better in the bed, though, so I put him in the guest bed with me. He woke up off and on all night long, coughing so hard I thought he was going to be sick and crying out in pain. He tossed and turned and finally got into a restful sleep at about 4:30. We both slept hard from that point until about 7:30, when I got up to start getting ready to go to the doctor. I didn't want to wake him up since he was finally sleeping, so I waited as long as I could to get him ready. I gave him a cup of teddy grahams while I was packing his diaper bag and a backpack with some things to entertain him at the office. He managed to spill the grahams, which sent him into a screaming fit on the floor. I knew it was going to be a trying trip to the doctor.
We actually got in to see the doctor pretty quickly, which was a huge blessing. Morning appointments are the way to go! I was quite a sight at the office, though. I had my coat, Caleb's coat, Caleb's "bed" (his blanket that he suddenly wants all the time), a full-size backpack and a kid-size backpack that we use as our diaper bag. Oh...and a toddler with a mind of his own who wanted to go in the opposite direction of where we needed to be at all times and screamed horrifically when I suggested otherwise. I'm sure I was "that mom" that all of the others looked at and just shook their heads thinking that I was a complete disaster and needed to get it together. They were right, but I didn't care. When Dr. Harmon came into the exam room, I said, "I bet you hate to see our names on your daily schedule." He just smiled and patted me on the back. Don't think that I didn't notice the fact that he didn't deny it. He looked at Caleb's ears and said they were in bad shape. I asked if they were infected and he said yes. He listened to him breathe and watched his pulse-ox for about 30 seconds and then wrote a prescription for phenergan with codeine and ordered a shot of rocephin for today and another one for tomorrow. He said that he'll decide tomorrow whether or not he needs another shot on Saturday. He's off the amoxicillin, but still on both breathing treatments. The rocephin shots are apparently very painful for kids, so the nurses apologized over and over to me and to Caleb for giving them. I assured them that neither of us would hold a grudge as long as they made him feel better.
After the doctor's office, we stopped very quickly at my office so that I could get my therapy materials for tomorrow. After that, we headed for Walgreen's to drop off our new prescription. Caleb had fallen asleep in the car, so I ate some Chick-Fil-A in the car while I waited on the medicine. When I went to pick up the prescription, the pharmacist told me that she had called the doctor's office because the phenergan was not recommended for children. Apparently, it can cause respiratory distress in children. What?!?! Why in the world did my pediatrician write the script then???? I kept my cool and asked her to call me when she heard from the doctor. Shortly after I got home, she did call and said that they had come up with an alternative and it would be ready when we wanted it. Rudy is picking it up on his way home from work today.
I tried to put Caleb into his bed when we got home, but he didn't want anything to do with that idea. I asked him if he wanted to eat and he said, "eat" so I put him in his chair and gave him some chicken. He very s-l-o-w-l-y managed to eat 4 nuggets and drink 1/2 a cup of milk. I gave him his breathing treatments and we read a book, then watched some "Melmo" (Sesame Street) before I put him down for his nap. That was about an hour and a half ago and he's starting to wake up now. We'll see how the afternoon goes...
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